Coronavirus: Cuomo shifts metrics, allowing Albany to open sooner

Jon CampbellGannett New York

Monday

May 18, 2020 at 7:30 AM

ALBANY – The Buffalo and Albany areas could soon start reopening from coronavirus shutdowns after Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration made a major shift Sunday in the way it calculates its COVID-19 benchmarks.

Western New York and the Capital Region could get the green light to enter Phase 1 of the state's reopening process at some point this week, at least a week sooner than they would have been able to under the state's prior calculation.

Now, those regions will be allowed to open as soon as they hire or train additional contract tracers tasked with keeping contact with COVID-positive patients and others who are quarantined.

When they open, seven of the state's 10 regions — all of them upstate — will have begun the state's reopening process. About 70 percent of the state's population resides in the remaining three regions, which cover New York City and its suburbs.

New York has been hit harder by the virus than any other state with more than 22,000 confirmed deaths and 350,000 people testing positive.

New York is only allowing its individual regions to begin reopening process if they meet seven key metrics identified by the Cuomo administration to ensure the virus spread has slowed.

Originally, those standards required regions to show a sustained, 14-day decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. Alternatively, a region could meet that standard if they had never seen a spike of more than 15 hospitalizations or five deaths in any three-day period since the start of the virus outbreak in March.

As of Saturday, Western New York and the Capital Region were both at least 10 days away from meeting the former benchmark because they had only seen a few days of sustained decline. They were disqualified from meeting the latter benchmark because they had seen significant spikes in March and April.

That changed Sunday.

Cuomo's administration reset the clock to May 15, when the state's first regions were allowed to reopen. The shift allowed the Capital Region and Western New York to qualify because they haven't seen a sharp spike in the past three days.

A Democrat, Cuomo did not mention the state's shift in calculating metrics during his briefing.

Jim Malatras, a Cuomo adviser who is president of SUNY Empire State College, said the state intended to look at the metrics in phases. The May 15 reset matched up with end of NYS on Pause, the stay-at-home order that expired May 15 in regions of the state that qualified for reopening.

If either the Capital Region or Western New York were to see a spike in hospitalizations or deaths in the coming days, they would no longer be eligible to reopen as soon, Malatras said.

"Regions can backslide out of this," he said.

The governor had faced criticism in recent days from local government officials who had questioned the state's data and whether they should be kept from reopening because of spikes that occurred weeks ago.

The major calculation change allowed the Capital Region, home to Albany, and Western New York, home to Buffalo, to meet six of the seven necessary metrics.

Both regions are expected to have the required number of contract tracers — 521 in Western New York, 383 in the Capital Region — in the coming days, which will clear the way for them to begin the reopening process.

Cuomo said Western New York is 352 tracers short, while the Capital Region needs to identify another 166.

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said the county is in the process of training 291 contract tracers and will train more if it helps push the Western New York region over the finish line.

"So our 291 identified employees is greater than our allotment, but if we have to do more to meet all of WNY's counties requirements we will," Poloncarz tweeted. "I guarantee it."

Downstate New York, meanwhile, remains more than a week away from reopening, based on the state's metrics.

New York City and the Mid-Hudson, which includes the city's northern suburbs, need to decrease their new daily COVID hospitalization rates to below 2 per 100,000 residents. As of Sunday, New York City was at 2.32 and the Mid-Hudson was at 2.41.

The Mid-Hudson region also has to see another 12 days of declining COVID deaths at hospitals, while New York City needs to increase its percentage of available hospital beds, according to the state's dashboard.

The Long Island Region has to see another 10 days of declining deaths (which are calculated on a three-day rolling basis), while all three downstate regions have to hire more contact tracers.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.